Patriotism and National Identity

Earlier this week, the Hudson Institute released a new study by John Fonte and Althea Nagai looking at political and patriotic assimilation by naturalized citizens. Comparing the answers given in a survey by naturalized Americans with those of native-born citizens, Fonte and Nagai found that there exists a substantial gap between the two groups of citizens in their patriotic attachment and civic knowledge.

In this week’s edition of the Weekly Standard, Boston College professor and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Peter Skerry (who joined us last January at AEI to discuss “The Muslim-American Muddle”) takes a look at current proposals for immigration reform and a “path to citizenship” for illegal immigrants. His advice? “Republicans must keep their immigration proposals tough, fair, and simple.”

At 7:55 am on December 7, 1941, the Japanese began their attack on Pearl Harbor, killing 2,390 Americans over the course of the two-hour attack. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, declaring December 7 a “date which will live in infamy,” asked Congress to declare war on Japan. World War II had officially begun for the United States.

This Sunday, November 11, is Veterans Day. We as a nation commemorate the holiday every year on November 11, but how many of us know why we do? What makes Veterans Day different from Memorial Day? What does the holiday mean, and how do we properly observe it? What does it mean to honor the Veterans in our midst?

As the Washington Post reported this week, the number of college students across the country participating in the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps has increased by 50 percent since the 2005–06 school year, with 36,474 students enrolled in the program this past school year. Indeed, during the 2011–12 school year, “the Army commissioned 5,880 officers and reservists, surpassing its goal of 5,350. That number is expected to increase in coming years as large incoming classes mature.”

We’ll leave the real post election analysis to the experts, but do want to point out just how incredible the act of voting is. Writing yesterday morning in The Americanafter waiting in line in the cold to vote, AEI’s Michael R. Strain poses the excellent question: “What in the history of mankind would make you think that such a thing was possible?”

Today, as voters across the country stand in long lines to perform their civic duty and cast their votes, it seems appropriate to remind ourselves of why voting should be so important to Americans. In 1865, Frederick Douglass addressed the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston and provided a robust defense of black Americans’ desire to vote. His words are worth reading again today.

Every year, students in Tom Clarke’s high school history class at Lake Central High School in St. John, Indiana, embark upon a research project to track down the families of the state’s battle casualties and learn more about those who died in service to their country. And for each of the 27 years that the project has been assigned, both students and the families they interact with come away moved by the experience.

We have been keeping tabs on the return of ROTC to many Ivy League campuses this fall. Today, we bring you a recent column in the Yale Daily News written by Sam Cohen, a sophomore participating in the Navy ROTC program at the university, in which he reminds us of the benefits of having ROTC on campus, even for those who don’t directly participate in the program.

Over at the “At War” blog of The New York Times, Jonathan Raab, a sergeant in the New York National Guard currently serving in Kuwait, reminds us of the hardships many veterans face when they return home from war–and the responsibility we have to engage them in thoughtful conversation about their concerns.

In April of 2005, while serving as an infantry officer, Army Captain Scott Smiley was injured when a car bomb exploded while he was patrolling the city of Mosul, Iraq. The blast left him temporarily paralyzed on his right side and permanently blind.

On Monday, ROTC at Harvard University resumed its exercises on the Ivy’s campus–for the first time in 41 years. The Wall Street Journal reports: After decades of chilly relations between the elite school and the military, dating back to the Vietnam War and persisting because of past military policies on gay soldiers, Harvard has welcomed back […]

This morning, President Barack Obama and his wife laid a wreath at the Pentagon as part of an official observance remembering the events of September 11, 2011. The president also spoke to the families and friends of the victims, remarking that “eleven times we have marked another September 11th come and gone. Eleven times, we have paused in remembrance, in reflection, in unity and in purpose. This is never an easy day. But it is especially difficult for all of you–the families of nearly 3,000 innocents who lost their lives–your mothers and fathers, your husbands and wives, your sons and your daughters. They were taken from us suddenly and far too soon.”